Page 13 of Chosen, Eternally

J ames reaches out to offer his hand for balance, so I take it as I step into the tub, feeling his rough palm against the smoothness of mine.

I love his hands. I love how they work. I love how he plays me like an instrument with them, making me come as easily as if he could read my mind. How he holds me with so much love and care and devotion, like he’ll never let go. How he loves me with them in a way no one has ever been loved before.

James shoots me a smirk as I dip my feet in the hot water.

It’s like he knows what I’m thinking, like he can read every minuscule expression on my face.

He spreads his legs as far apart as they can go and slowly helps me to sit between them.

With care, I lean back against his warm chest once seated, feeling his hard cock press against my lower back as I rest my head against his shoulder.

When his arms wrap tightly around me, I sigh happily.

I’m in heaven.

“You are the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me, Hecate Goode,” he whispers in my ear before pressing a kiss to my neck.

“You’re just saying that because I saved your life.”

He play-growls. “Don’t be self-effacing, love.

I can’t stand it. I don’t love you because you saved my life, but just so you know, you didn’t just save it last night.

You saved it the second I met you. You saved me from loneliness.

From being the sad, almost-orphan when I first got to college.

You saved me from myself after my mother died and I became an actual orphan.

We’re different, but somehow cut from the same cloth, so you get me.

Every day, you’ve been my savior, and that was way before you ever became the Chosen Protector. ” James tightens his arms around me.

I fight back tears and sniffle. “I love you.”

He inhales the scent of my skin as if I were the most incredible drug. “I love you, too, Cate.” A kiss on my jugular. Another on the ball of my shoulder. “You smell incredible, by the way. Better than I remember. And you’re perfect. A goddess. You can’t deny it. Especially not with those powers.”

I frown, thankful he can’t see the expression on my face. “So it’s my powers you like?”

He scoffs. “I wasn’t talking about your magic.

I worshipped at your feet before I knew you were a witch.

I was the sole member of The Church of Cate and thrilled about it.

Less so when I thought you didn’t return my feelings, but, my god,” he says with a sigh, shaking his head in wonder.

“Those short minutes we had together before everything went to shit were amazing. To be honest, it was the thought of seeing you again that kept me alive all that time I was imprisoned.”

My heart wrenches in my chest, body tensing. He feels every inch of the shift in my body language.

“Baby, no,” he whispers in my ear, pulling back my hair so he can reach more of my neck, place kisses on my wet skin from my jaw to the tip of my shoulder. “Don’t. We’re here now, aren’t we?”

“Are we? I can’t be sure. I still don’t know whether this is a dream or reality. I’ve fantasized about this very moment more times than I can count. In this tub, too.”

He chuckles, the mood quickly shifting back into something lighter. “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

I twist in his arms and lightly slap him on the shoulder. “C’mon.”

“I’m serious. You gonna tell me about them or what?”

“Mmm.” I lean back against his chest again, wrap his arms loosely around my waist. Tracing the tattoo he got his sophomore year on his inner forearm, I admire the cords of his muscles.

Feel the heat of him beneath my fingertips.

Dream of those arms holding my hands above my head as he enters me.

Suddenly, my skin flushes a deep crimson.

He notices with a chuckle.

One of James’s hands begins a titillating trajectory down my chest, between my breasts.

He stops for a moment to circle one of my nipples—to pinch and tug it while I moan in pleasure.

Heat that has nothing to do with the hot water starts to build between my legs, a delicious empty feeling building low in my stomach.

“Cate,” he whispers in my ear, his voice taking a dark tone. “If you tell me about your fantasies, I may just make them come true, baby.”

I whimper, because this is beyond my wildest dreams. Having him back is already more than I could’ve ever hoped for, but to have him like this, too?

“Tell me.” This time, his voice takes on a more pleading tone. Because that’s James: always wanting to please me. Take care of me. Make sure I’m happy and my needs are met above anyone else’s.

And it’s never been like that with anyone else.

It’s always about the good of the many. Even before I became the Chosen Protector, I’ve never been allowed to pick what life to lead for myself.

The Magicks Shoppe. Witch lessons. Not being allowed to leave Salem.

Everyone else in my life only ever spoke of my duty to the world around me.

Not James. No, he’s always been one to think of how to make my life easier, happier. Better.

Gods, I love him.

“Well, I thought a lot about us in here. I’d… turn off the lights. Use my powers to make the ceiling look like the night sky. And then just…” I sigh, closing my eyes. “Let go. Think of us in a better place. A different timeline where things didn’t go to shit.”

James places a reassuring kiss on my shoulder.

“Most of the time, it wasn’t anything sexual,” I admit. “Mostly, I dreamed of a life together. What our lives should’ve been had our future not been ripped away from us. But when I wasn’t thinking of things like that, I fantasized about something more…”

“More what, baby?” he presses, his voice gravelly.

“Just… More .”

I feel his crooked smile against my neck, then a small bite on my skin before he soothes it with the flick of his tongue. The danger of his sharp fangs turns me on even more for some reason. I know it goes against everything I was raised to believe in, but I almost beg for him to bite me.

To claim me.

To taste me.

I just want to surrender myself over to him.

When I moan at the thought, he laughs darkly.

One of his hands dips below the water, moving up my inner thigh in a slow, tantalizing caress. I lean back into him with a moan when his fingers reach my clit. Begin to circle it in a way that makes me hate him and love him at the same time.

“ James. ”

“Tell me, baby,” he murmurs in my ear. “Did you ever imagine this? Did you imagine me playing with your pussy right here?”

I gasp for breath when his fingers finally come over my clit, rubbing it in a perfect, consistent, yet torturous rhythm.“Yes,” I burst. “Yes, so many times.”

His laugh is dark when he moves his index and middle finger down to my folds, where I’m slick and wet, and I’m not talking about the bath water.

“I’ve dreamt about this pussy countless times,” he confesses. “How you would feel in my mouth. How you would taste . How I would happily spend hours worshipping at your fucking feet, eating you out for as long as you’ll let me.”

My chest rises and falls, my breathing embarrassingly fast and desperate, as if I’ve been drowning for months without him. And haven’t I, though? Haven’t I been practically anoxic this entire time?

He moves his two fingers lower, tapping at my entrance in a silent request for permission.

I don’t hesitate to nod. Enthusiastically .

James growls and bites my earlobe before hooking both fingers into me, pushing through without further delay.

It’s almost forceful, but I love it. I’m already sore from earlier this morning, aching from the friction of his thick cock and everything we’ve done over the past twenty-four hours, but it’s good.

I like the pain. It serves as a reminder that he’s real.

That this is real and that my hallucinations haven’t gotten the better of me.

That the way he thrusts and hooks his fingers into me right now, the heel of his hand expertly pressed against my clit, isn’t just another scene from the catalogue of fantasies in my head.

It doesn’t take long before his fingers get me there. After too short a moment, I’m coming in his arms as he whispers impossible words.

…most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my life…

…wanna come on your tits and face and just ? —

…have loved you since the second I laid eyes on you and can’t believe…

I don’t catch all of it—just bits and pieces through brief moments of consciousness as I come down from my orgasm.

With delicate movements, his hard cock a steel rod against my lower back, James pulls his fingers from my pussy and brings them to his mouth.

It’s filthy and devastatingly hot.

“You okay?” he asks.

I cannot open my eyes for anything, so blissed out I can barely move. Somehow, though, I manage to nod.

“You taste amazing, by the way.” He places open mouthed kisses on my skin, sucking at my neck and shoulder. “Hmmm, but I’d bet you taste better straight from the source.”

“Huh? What are you?—”

Even though I’m the Chosen Protector, and I should have better instincts than that, he manages to pick me up and place me on the edge of the tub, my back pressed against the cold tile, before I even know what’s happening.

“Spread your legs,” he orders, kneeling in front of me in the hot water. “I need to taste you again.”

“But I— Gods .” I fall back on the heels of my hands, my head lolling against the wall, as his tongue swipes me from the very bottom—so close to that tight ring of muscles—to my clit.

It’s there where he groans like a man starved, sucking and twirling his tongue as I call out his name, two fingers sunk deep inside me.

One of my hands slips into his light hair, grasping, pulling.

Holding on for dear fucking life because this man?—

Oh, gods ? —

This man is going to kill me, and it won’t be because he’s a vampire.

“ James !” I come harder than I ever have before, his tight grip on my hips and thigh only adding to the myriad of sensations his incredible mouth was able to produce.

My pussy pulses over and over again, squeezing his fingers through my release. And I’m so thankful for them. So thankful for this out-of-body experience that has me gasping for air as if I were on the verge of death.

And I love it.

I love him .

“I love you, too,” he whispers into the crease of my thigh while I come down from my high. “I’ve never known something this powerful. I never want to give you up, no matter what we are in this fucked up world.”

I open my eyes to look into his—concern and pain runs so deep in them. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Even though I’m a…” He swallows thickly.

“No,” I murmur, cupping his face, tilting it up toward mine as I bring my lips to his swollen ones.

The kiss is soft, slow, and perfect. I can taste myself on his tongue, but it just serves as a reminder of what he did and how perfect we are together.

“Nothing will keep us apart. Not if I can help it.”